Lecture on Renaissance of Rhetoric
I. Introduction: The causes of the Renaissance.
A. The case of Florence, concentrated wealth supports artists. Medici family Cosimo to Lorenzo.
1. Dante, Divine Comedy in vernacular (1305), dies 1321.
2. Petrarch (1304-1375) discovers lost speeches of Cicero.
3. Bocaccio= Decameron
4. Salutati, Bruni, and
Lorenzo Valla become accomplished orators and each
becomes Chancellor of the Republic. 5. Savonarola (1452-1498)
B. In the meantime, Gutenberg develops printing press with moveable type in
Mainz in 1456.
1. 1476 Caxton
2. 1517 Luther posts 95 Thesis, goes on to print Bible in vernacular. "Every man his own priest." "Justification
by faith alone."
II. Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527):
A. Analyze the times and customs: "People have and always will have the
same passions" and they produce the same results.
1. Map out political relationships.
2. Personal traits of the constituency: Common traits Corrupted traits Example
Discontented Ungrateful-greedy just complain
- Shortsighted Fickle crisis oriented, desert their leaders
- Lazy Cowardly Inactive as opposed to fleeing in face of enemy
C. Machiavelli suggests addressing the audience as if it were in the desired state of mind.
D. Notion of sources of political reputation: Each contributes to a persona
and to a sense of self.
1. Ancestors
2. Associations
3. Deeds
III. The Prince (written in 1513, published in 1532) and the Discourses: "Your intentions should not be evident."
A. The Prince (18) The need for virtuous
appearances: each primary virtue is named and then paired with a secondary virture that reinforces it:
1. religious -- generous
2. compassionate -- sensitive
3. faithful -- pure
4. sincere -- stern
5. considerate -- serious "Everyone sees what you
appear to be, few sense what you really are."
B. "Vicious appearances"
1. Cruelty evokes fear, which is more useful than love when it comes to
ruling.
2. lenience evokes gratitude Peter (Petrus) Ramus, French, 1515-1572
IV. Ramus lived in the academic environment, Unversity of Paris.
A. Applied dialectic (logica) to all subjects in
order to teach them better. By 1536, he had condemned all of Aristotle's works
as vain.
1. Return to Plato.
2. Takes inventio and dispositio
from rhetoric.
3. Leaves rhetoric with style, memory, and delivery only.
B. Ramus's system focuses on subject-predicate pairs: cause to effect, effect to cause, subject to adjunct, opposite to opposite, like to like, term to cognate, whole to parts, thing to essence, and relationships established by sanction or rule making.
C. These then led to proposition building and eventually syllogism building.
1. The building process should follow a natural order of abstraction (general
down to specific, or vice versa)
D. What's left for rhetoric is embellishment for the "mulish auditors".
E. Ramus was killed August 26, 1572 during the St. Bartholomew's day massacre ordered by Kathrine de Medici, the queen of France who hates Protestants. English Renaissance
I. 1530, Leonard Cox publishes The Arte and Crafte of Rhetoric.
II. Richard Sherry publishes his Treatise on Schemes and Tropes in 1550.
III. 1553 Thomas Wilson publishes Arte of Rhetorique
IV. 1577 Henry Peacham publishes Garden of Eloquence
V. Shakespeare, 1564 to 1616, is high water mark of Renaissance. Francis Bacon, 1561-1626
I. Epistemology is the study of how we come to know things, how are mind works. 1605 Bacon publishes his theory in Advancement of Leaning
A. Bacon believed the mind could be divided into various faculties; that the faculties interrelated in certain ways; and that they produced knowledge: FACULTIES = WILL, APPETITES (AFFECTIONS), REASON, MEMORY, IMAGINATION
B. The faculties allow mankind to:
1. Inquire and invent.
2. Examine and judge.
3. Recall ideas and maintain custody over them.
4. Transmit thought in language
C. Communication can be divided into three realms:
1. the Organon of Discourse= grammar, diction, rules,
vocabulary.
2. Method of Discourse = organization, planning, logic
3. Illustration of Discourse = rhetoric, which includes arguments based on
probability, imaginative proof, ethos, and style. John Locke (Lecture Notes)
II. Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
A. An idea is the immediate object of the mind; it is distinct from the sign
used to convey it.
1. Simple ideas are the raw material of all knowledge. They are obtained by the
senses.
2. The senses have access to "things as they are."
3. This primacy is corrupted by language, society, and culture.
4. We are born "tabula rasa"
= empty cabinet or white paper. Rhetoric interferes when it builds illusions.
B. ASSOCIATION is a better way of learning.
1. Linking ideas to reveal similarities.
2. Abstraction of ideas.
3. Addition, subtraction, combination and arrangement help us build complext ideas from simple ones.
C. Locke thereby revives audience adaptation arguing that rhetoric is the
application of reason to the imagination for the better moving of the will.
1. Internal discourse is more authentic because it is more likely to be based
on direct apprehension. This becomes the basis of his "philosophical
discourse."
2. External discourse is more likely to be corrupted because it is adapted to
society, culture, and ordinary language. This is the basis of his "civil
discourse," which is much less exact.
3. Challenge is to cleanse internal discourse, and then cleanse external
discourse.
D. We must communicate to clarify our ideas and to be sure we are not tyrranized by the language of others.
1. Locke, like Newton and Bacon, ushered in the Enlightenment in which men
believed that science and logic could solve all problems. That mutual agreement
among the educated could verify truth. All of them tried to make language match
the order of natural science.
a. Truth must be induced, not deduced.
b. Rejection of metaphysics.
c. Establishes levels of knowing (epistemology): First is intuition (eye to
object; mind to truth), second is demonstration (logic); third is judgment
(interpretation of probability); fourth is persuasion (style, passions, which
short circuit).
2. So he condemned the use of "Rhetorick ... for
nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the Passions, and thereby
mislead the Judgment."